The Hand That First Held Mine Quotes

“Listen. The trees in this story are stirring, trembling, readjusting themselves. A breeze is coming in gusts off the sea, and it is almost as if the trees know, in their restlessness, in their head-tossing impatience, that something is about to happen.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Hand That First Held Mine

“You young people are always so obsessed with truth. The truth is often overrated.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Hand That First Held Mine

“And we forget because we must.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Hand That First Held Mine

“The women we become after children, she typed, then stopped to adjust the angle of the paper....We change shape, she continued, we buy low-heeled shoes, we cut off our long hair, We begin to carry in our bags half-eaten rusks, a small tractor, a shred of beloved fabric, a plastic doll. We lose muscle tone, sleep, reason, persoective. Our hearts begin to live outside our bodies. They breathe, they eat, they crawl and-look!-they walk, they begin to speak to us. We learn that we must sometimes walk an inch at a time, to stop and examine every stick, every stone, every squashed tin along the way. We get used to not getting where we were going. We learn to darn, perhaps to cook, to patch knees of dungarees. We get used to living with a love that suffuses us, suffocates us, blinds us, controls us. We live, We contemplate our bodies, our stretched skin, those threads of silver around our brows, our strangely enlarged feet. We learn to look less in the mirror. We put our dry-clean-only clothes to the back of the wardrobe. Eventually we throw them away. We school ourselves to stop saying 'shit' and 'damn' and learn to say 'my goodness' and 'heavens above.' We give up smoking, we color our hair, we search the vistas of parks, swimming-pools, libraries, cafes for others of our kind. We know each other by our pushchairs, our sleepless gazes, the beakers we carry. We learn how to cool a fever, ease a cough, the four indicators of meningitis, that one must sometimes push a swing for two hours. We buy biscuit cutters, washable paints, aprons, plastic bowls. We no longer tolerate delayed buses, fighting in the street, smoking in restaurants, sex after midnight, inconsistency, laziness, being cold. We contemplate younger women as they pass us in the street, with their cigarettes, their makeup, their tight-seamed dresses, their tiny handbags, their smooth washed hair, and we turn away, we put down our heads, we keep on pushing the pram up the hill.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Hand That First Held Mine

“There on the landing sits the typewriter. It is clogged with dust, the ribbon dried and flimsy. Looking at it gives Felix a feeling close to vertigo. He realises he can replicate in his head the exact sound it used to make. The clac-clac-a-clac of the metal letters hitting the paper, the ribbon raising itself each time to make the impression. The machine-gun fire of it, when the work was going well. The stops and pauses when it wasn't, to allow for a sigh, a draw on a cigarette. The ding every time the carriage reached its limit. The whirr as the page was snatched out, then the rolling ratcheting as a new one was wound in.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Hand That First Held Mine

“He is momentarily filled with a kind of pity for his son. What a task lies ahead of him: to learn literally everything.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Hand That First Held Mine

“when he came off the beach. She would not see him again. She fought like a crazed thing. She fought to live, she fought to come back. She has always wanted to tell him this, in some way. She tried. She would like to say to him, Theo, I tried. I fought because I didn’t see how I could leave you. But I lost.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Hand That First Held Mine

“Far above in the building, a door slams, muffled voices are heard and there is the sound of feet rapidly descending a staircase. The café seems to listen attentively. The dried glasses on the shelves vibrate against each other, in sympathy with the crashing footsteps. The contracting metal of the cappuccino machine clicks. A drop of water falls from the tap, spreads over the bowl of the sink, then trickles towards the plughole.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Hand That First Held Mine

“Por primera vez se pregunta si, para reanimarla, le pondrían la sangre de una persona o de varias. Y si seguirá siendo ella misma, ahora que la sangre que riega su cuerpo no es la suya. ¿En qué momento se convierte uno en otra persona?”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Hand That First Held Mine

“was Innes who damaged the tiles, although none of the current residents of the house know this. On a wet day in the late 1920s, a seven-year-old Innes stole a metal tray from the kitchen and carried it all the way up to the top of the stairs and proceeded to toboggan down, skidding over the carpet, from landing to landing, riding the swells and troughs of the stairs, until he arrived with a resounding crash in the hallway. The impact of the edge of the tray with the Victorian tiles caused a long, snaking crack; Innes hurtled forward to collide with the sharp corner of a coat rack. His screams brought Consuela running from the kitchen, brought his mother down from the drawing room above. There was a lot of blood on the tiles that day, red among the blue and white. He had to have two stitches in his forehead and there would be a small, vertical scar there for the”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Hand That First Held Mine

“younger women as they pass us in the street, with their cigarettes, their makeup, their tight-seamed dresses, their tiny handbags, their smooth, washed hair, and we turn away, we put down our heads, we keep on pushing the pram up the hill.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Hand That First Held Mine

“said. ‘Get my camera, would you?”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Hand That First Held Mine